Choice Text and Results

Climb up

You move around the room, jumping here and there, trying to get your hands up to one of the lower branches. Then you apply yourself to its bark, which doesn't seem rough enough for your reflection to get a good handhold.

The lowest branches are just too high, though. Maybe if you had a pile of sand or something to stand on.

Aside from making yourself look kind of foolish, it was a pretty good workout.

Nap at its base

You curl up on your floor, letting your reflection do the same. It's a nice nap, actually. When you wake back up, you can feel the warmth of the sun on those scattered places the branches hadn't blocked it.

Explore where she hid

You crouch on the ground and wriggle along, prompting your reflection into the tiny gap between roots. Eventually, it makes its way into a larger chamber… well, a chamber large enough to stand up in, at least.

Protruding from the rock wall at about chest height is the handle of a rusted iron sword. Cracks spiderweb through the stone around it, crisscrossing with the cracks in the mirror.

Someone obviously tried to maintain the place, using metal staples or bands to keep the cracks from widening. Whether that would actually work is a better question that you don't have an immediate answer to.

Pull out the sword

You walk towards the mirror a bit, positioning your reflection to wrap its hands around the sword's hilt. You lean back, pulling against it as hard as you can… and realize you're standing there, pulling against thin air. Which is awesome in its own right, but the thin air doesn't seem to be budging.

After challenging the hermit without a sword equipped (needs to be unlocked again each time):

You walk towards the mirror a bit, positioning your reflection to wrap its hands around the sword's hilt. You lean back, pulling against it as hard as you can… and realize you're standing there, pulling against thin air.

You haul back against it and the sword slowly slides back in your reflection's hands as you slide in slow motion towards the floor.

And if you have shattered his sword (the previous day?)

A strange light pours from the wound in the stone, a harsh light like the first rays of spring driving away winter.

Finally there's a "ting!" as a shard of the mirror breaks off and bounces across the room. Huh, there's a little reflection of the sword in there.

That… might be useful against the crazed hermit, if you can get it back to your reflection somehow.

You settle down on your floor, prompting your reflection to do the same among the dirt and rocks. Focusing on the sword, you meditate…

Oh man. This totally reminds you of when Matsuo had to undergo the thirty-seven trials to get the Sword of Uther he needed to kill the Serpentine Dragon's more powerful ultimate form. Man, those episodes rule!

Unfortunately… there doesn't seem to be a water nymph around giving a series of increasingly challenging quests for you to barely succeed at by the skin of your teeth. So you just bask in the reflected awesome for a while.

Explore deeper

You maneuver your reflection past the sword and further into the depths, struggling past narrow tunnels, gnarled roots, rockfalls, and inexplicable piles of bones… hundreds of them, just stacked there like people up and decided to stop having flesh.

After all that, though, you find yourself back at the sword chamber. Huh. You're relatively sure that you were going down the whole time… but it's possible you got confused with the mirror and all the bones.

Use the sword on it

You press the shard against the mirror and your reflection is holding a rusted sword, as though it always had been. You take a few awkward, empty-handed swings to get the hang of it, then start chopping into the tree with all the vigor you can manage.

You strike three powerful blows against it, but leave only scars along the bark. The fourth blow shatters the sword in your reflection's hand and sends numbing tingles back up your arms.